OSIRIS-REx: Sample Return from Asteroid (101955) Bennu
Abstract
In May of 2011, NASA selected the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) asteroid sample return mission as the third mission in the New Frontiers program. The other two New Frontiers missions are New Horizons, which explored Pluto during a flyby in July 2015 and is on its way for a flyby of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019, and Juno, an orbiting mission that is studying the origin, evolution, and internal structure of Jupiter. The spacecraft departed for near-Earth asteroid (101955) Bennu aboard an United Launch Alliance Atlas V 411 evolved expendable launch vehicle at 7:05 p.m. EDT on September 8, 2016, on a seven-year journey to return samples from Bennu. The spacecraft is on an outbound-cruise trajectory that will result in a rendezvous with Bennu in August 2018. The science instruments on the spacecraft will survey Bennu to measure its physical, geological, and chemical properties, and the team will use these data to select a site on the surface to collect at least 60 g of asteroid regolith. The team will also analyze the remote-sensing data to perform a detailed study of the sample site for context, assess Bennus resource potential, refine estimates of its impact probability with Earth, and provide ground-truth data for the extensive astronomical data set collected on this asteroid. The spacecraft will leave Bennu in 2021 and return the sample to the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) on September 24, 2023.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1702.06981,
title = {OSIRIS-REx: Sample Return from Asteroid (101955) Bennu},
author = {D. S. Lauretta and S. S. Balram-Knutson and E. Beshore and W. V. Boynton and C. Drouet dAubigny and D. N. DellaGiustina and H. L. Enos and D. R. Gholish and C. W. Hergenrother and E. S. Howell and C. A. Johnson and E. T. Morton and M. C. Nolan and B. Rizk and H. L. Roper and A. E. Bartels and B. J. Bos and J. P. Dworkin and D. E. Highsmith and D. A. Lorenz and L. F. Lim and R. Mink and M. C. Moreau and J. A. Nuth and D. C. Reuter and A. A. Simon and E. B. Bierhaus and B. H. Bryan and R. Ballouz and O. S. Barnouin and R. P. Binzel and W. F. Bottke and V. E. Hamilton and K. J. Walsh and S. R. Chesley and P. R. Christensen and B. E. Clark and H. C. Connolly and M. K. Crombie and M. G. Daly and J. P. Emery and T. J. McCoy and J. W. McMahon and D. J. Scheeres and S. Messenger and K. Nakamura-Messenger and K. Righter and S. A. Sandford},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1702.06981},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
89 pages, 39 figures, submitted to Space Science Reviews - OSIRIS-REx special issue